In a major advance for hard-line proponents of giving the government wide access to electronic data, several influential senators have declared their support of mandatory key recovery features for all encryption-enabled software sold in the United States.
At a Judiciary subcommittee meeting Wednesday, Senator Dianne Feinstein was among those who came out strongly in support of the position taken by FBI Director Louis Freeh that mandatory key recovery is essential to deterring crime.
"Nothing other than some kind of mandatory key recovery really does the job," the California Democrat said at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee's technology, terrorism, and government information subcommittee. "The public-safety issue is a paramount one."
The subcommittee's chairman, Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), added that he was "in complete agreement."
Freeh and others suggest that all software carrying encryption capability include key recovery; however, users would not be compelled to use those features. Feinstein proposed going further, requiring use of key recovery in all encryption-enabled software.
The Clinton White House, like past administrations, has, along with major police and spy agencies, a been strong supporter of measures that would give government agents wide access to encrypted data. On Thursday, however, a top administration crypto policy-maker said he thinks what Freeh and Feinstein are proposing goes too far and does not represent White House thinking on the matter.
Commerce Undersecretary William Reinsch said Freeh's proposal was also unlikely to pass.
"If the committee were to report that [bill out[, I think that would be something we would look at very seriously," he said. "But I don't expect that to happen. We have not asked them to report that and we are not going to ask them to report that."
To date in Congress, sweeping measures to give government agents an easy-open back door to scrambled data have been met with strong opposition and legislation that cuts in the opposite direction.
Bills in both the House and Senate have sought to exclude mandatory key recovery systems as a requirement not only for US software-makers and users but also for export products. The Senate version of this liberalized policy is, practically speaking, dead, supplanted by the Secure Public Networks Act by Senators Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska) and John McCain (R-Arizona). The bill offers incentives to software manufacturers for building key recovery features into their products. In the House, a liberalization bill by Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia) is not only alive but has gained a majority of members as cosponsors.
The software industry, civil liberties advocates, and privacy groups on both the right and the left have opposed mandatory key recovery. Some opponents were stunned by Wednesday's hearing.
"It was really shocking to hear how casually senators and the FBI director talked about imposing domestic controls," said Alan Davidson, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "They've crossed a new line in this debate."
"It appears that Senator Feinstein wants a Constitution- free zone for the Internet," said David Banisar, staff counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Reuters contributed to this report.
